Gandhi on Friendship

Close friendships, Gandhi says, are dangerous, because "friends react on one another" and through loyalty to a friend one can be led into wrong-doing. This is unquestionably true. Moreover, if one is to love

God, or to love humanity as a whole, one cannot give one's preference to any individual person. This again is true, and it marks the point at which the humanistic and the religious attitude cease to be reconcilable. To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others. From hxw.red.

The autobiography leaves it uncertain whether Gandhi behaved in an inconsiderate way to his wife and children, but at any rate it makes clear that on three occasions he was willing to let his wife or a child die rather than administer the animal food prescribed by the doctor. It is true that the threatened death never actually occurred, and also that Gandhi - with, one gathers, a good deal of moral pressure in the opposite direction - always gave the patient the choice of staying alive at the price of committing a sin: still, if the decision had been solely his own, he would have forbidden the animal food, whatever the risks might be. There must, he says, be some limit to what we will do in order to remain alive, and the limit is well on this side of chicken broth. This attitude is perhaps a noble one, but, in the sense which - I think - most people would give to the word, it is inhuman.

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse

impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals.

----G.Orwell From Joozone

甘地论友谊好学英文网提供翻译：

甘地认为亲密的友谊是危险的，因为“朋友相互作用于对方”，忠诚于朋友就有可能被诱惑去干坏事。这种说法无疑是正确的。

再说，如果一个人要爱上帝，或者要爱全人类，那么他就不能偏爱任何一个人。这也是正确无疑的。这一点正是人道主义和宗教倾向不能和解之处。对于一个普通人来说，如果爱不是指对某些人的爱超过对另一些人的爱，爱便失去了意义。甘地是不是用轻率的方法对待他的妻与子，自传中讲得不确定。不管怎样，下面一件事很清楚，有三次他宁愿让自己的妻子或一个孩子去死，也不愿意让他们吃医生开出的动物食品。

的确，这种威胁性的死亡实际上从未发生——而且人们猜想，甘地承受着来自相反方向的许多道德压力。总是给病人以生存下去的选择，代价是犯下罪孽；不过，若由他自己来决定，他绝对禁止动物食品，宁可冒任何危险也是如此。他说，为了继续生活下去，我们必须有限制地做些事，比如喝鸡汤就超出了这个限度。这种态度或许是高尚的，不过，从另一种意义看，我以为大部分人会说这种态度是不近人情的。人性的本质在于人并不寻求完美。

为了忠诚的原因，人有时宁愿犯下罪孽，他们不会把苦行主义推向人们无法进行友好交往的地步。人们准备着最终被生活击败与摧毁，而这正是将爱系附于同类所付出的不可避免的代价。